The present invention generally relates of the fields of networked computerized industrial control, automation systems and networked computerized systems utilized to monitor, log, and display relevant manufacturing/production events and associated data, and supervisory level control and manufacturing information systems. Such systems generally execute above a regulatory control layer in a process control system to provide guidance to lower level control elements such as, by way of example, programmable logic controllers or distributed control systems (DCSs). Such systems are also employed to acquire and manage historical information relating to such processes and their associated output. More particularly, the present invention relates to a human-machine interface (HMI) system for a manufacturing and/or process control system such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and/or manufacturing execution systems (MES). Such systems generally execute above/outside of a control layer of a manufacturing/process control system to record production events and related event data and to provide guidance to lower level control elements such as, by way of example, programmable logic controllers.
Industry increasingly depends upon highly automated data acquisition and control systems to ensure that industrial processes are run efficiently, safely and reliably while lowering their overall production costs. Data acquisition begins when a number of sensors measure aspects of an industrial process and periodically report their measurements back to a data collection and control system. Such measurements come in a wide variety of forms. By way of example the measurements produced by a sensor/recorder include: a temperature, a pressure, a pH, a mass/volume flow of material, a tallied inventory of packages waiting in a shipping line, or a photograph of a room in a factory. Often sophisticated process management and control software examines the incoming data, produces status reports, and, in many cases, responds by sending commands to actuators/controllers that adjust the operation of at least a portion of the industrial process. The data produced by the sensors also allow an operator to perform a number of supervisory tasks including: tailor the process (e.g., specify new set points) in response to varying external conditions (including costs of raw materials), detect an inefficient/non-optimal operating condition and/or impending equipment failure, and take remedial actions such as move equipment into and out of service as required.
Typical industrial processes are extremely complex and receive substantially greater volumes of information than any human could possibly digest in its raw form. By way of example, it is not unheard of to have thousands of sensors and control elements (e.g., valve actuators) monitoring/controlling aspects of a multi-stage process within an industrial plant. These sensors are of varied type and report on varied characteristics of the process. Their outputs are similarly varied in the meaning of their measurements, in the amount of data sent for each measurement, and in the frequency of their measurements. As regards the latter, for accuracy and to enable quick response, some of these sensors/control elements take one or more measurements every second. Multiplying a single sensor/control element by thousands of sensors/control elements (a typical industrial control environment) results in an overwhelming volume of data flowing into the manufacturing information and process control system. Sophisticated data management and process visualization techniques have been developed to handle the large volumes of data generated by such system.
Highly advanced human-machine interface/process visualization systems exist today that are linked to data sources such as the above-described sensors and controllers. Such systems acquire and digest (e.g., filter) the process data described above. The digested process data in-turn drives a graphical display rendered by a human machine interface. Examples of such systems are the well-known Wonderware INTOUCH.RTM. human-machine interface (HMI) software system for visualizing and controlling a wide variety of industrial processes and the ArchestrA™ (e.g., the application server or AppServer for INTOUCH™) comprehensive automation and information software open architecture designed to integrate and extend the life of legacy systems by leveraging the latest, open industry standards and software technologies.
An INTOUCH HMI process visualization application includes a set of graphical views of a particular process. Each view, in turn, comprises one or more graphical elements. The graphical elements are “animated” in the sense that their display state changes over time in response to associated/linked data sources. For example, a view of a refining process potentially includes a tank graphical element. The tank graphical element has a visual indicator showing the level of a liquid contained within the tank, and the level indicator of the graphical element rises and falls in response to a stream of data supplied by a tank level sensor indicative of the liquid level within the tank. Animated graphical images driven by constantly changing process data values within data streams, of which the tank level indicator is only one example, are considerably easier for a human observer to comprehend than a stream of numbers. For this reason process visualization systems, such as INTOUCH, have become components of supervisory process control and manufacturing information systems.
The INTOUCH HMI empowers users to quickly and easily develop custom graphical views of their processes. Users can develop graphics with a variety of tools in WONDERWARE's WindowMaker graphical view editing program, which includes: standard graphical components, displays, animations, bitmap images, ActiveX controls, a graphics library containing thousands of preconfigured industrial images, SmartSymbol technology, tag definitions, I/O configuration, binding, scripts, alarm and history configurations.
Typically, users use INTOUCH to develop supervisory control and data acquisition systems applications and HMI applications. Users use INTOUCH to develop their custom applications to visualize plant data and status in a real-time manner by interfacing HMI software to sources of plant equipment, such as PLCs. To develop INTOUCH applications, users need to define real-time data connectivity to PLC, tag database, graphics development, graphics animation and alarms definition.
HMI applications have been used for supervisory controls, panels and controls. HMI applications are developed using HMI application development utilities that allow users to create a specific configuration (referred to herein as an HMI application) for their own specific need/application. Therefore, HMI development utility software is designed and developed by a software vendor. Thereafter, the HMI development utility is used by end users to render a potentially vast number of HMI applications including views and associated functionality for particularized needs of specific process automation and manufacturing information installations.
While it is important to innovate and provide new technological offerings, it is also important to provide a migration path from existing technologies to the new offerings. HMI technologies and the systems within which they operate are constantly evolving. Typical manufacturing automation HMI application definitions consist of a number of configured elements including: displays, tags, I/O binding, PLC connections, animations, scripts, alarms and events, history configuration. Therefore evolution of HMI technologies presents a potential problem for users that have created a large number of HMI applications using existing technologies.
To encourage users to adopt newer technologies, HMI utility developers have provided migration paths that enable users to leverage their previously created HMI applications in systems that adopt newer platforms. The general approach of such developers is to provide tools that extract and convert the configured information of the existing HMI applications from existing HMI applications into HMI applications that will run on the new technological platforms.
An exemplary environment within which supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and manufacturing execution system (MES) are potentially implemented is described, for example in Krajewski III, et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/943,301 which corresponds to US App. Pub. 2006/0056285 A1, and Krajewski et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/549,801 which corresponds to US App. Pub. 2008/0189637 A1, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, including any references contained therein. The MES is, by way of example, the Wonderware Operations Software (formally known as Factelligence), which provides a scalable and configurable Manufacturing Execution System (MES) designed to help manufacturers across a wide range of industries improve their operational efficiency, manufacturing responsiveness and brand integrity, a product of Invensys, Systems, Inc. The MES differs from the SCADA component in that it is not generally used to exert supervisory control over a plant/manufacturing process. Instead, the MES monitors production and records various production/manufacturing events and applies known business rules to render decisions governing production operations carried out by the SCADA system. MES systems interface to higher level enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.